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Some Newspaper Tendencies 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE EDITORIAL ASSOCIATIONS OF 
NEW-YORK AND OHIO 



BY 



WHITELAW REID 




NEW-YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1879 



SOME NEWSPAPER TEXDEXCIES. 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the Editorial Associations 
of New-York and Ohio. 

I am to speak to you of our common work 
—of its needs, its tendencies, its possibili- 
ties. 

It may well happen that this may lead to a 
mention of some faults of wMch we are all 
guilty, and of some standards by which we 
might all profitably try ourselves. No doubt 
it would be easy tor any critic that cared, to 
show that I do not live up to these standards 
myself. 1 do not pretend to. No man's work 
is so good as his id^al; must he, therefore, 
have no ideal toward which to work f No 
man can wholly control his circumstances ; 
must he, therefore, wholly surrender to them? 
Growth is but a succession of partial failures. 
You, whose purpose is the highest, you must 
perforce fail the most conspicuously. Y r et, all 



4 

the same, your arrow, even though it miss 
its aim, carries further if aimed at the stars. 

Every now and then some Magnus Apollo 
of an earlier day returns to our profession. 
We all give him most respectful salutation ; 
felicitate ourselves on the great gain we shall 
have from his experience, judgment, skill ; 
and wait. Eegularly, decisively, and at the 
outset, he fails. 

The reason of this monotonous disappoint- 
ment has come to be recognized. The business 
of making a newspaper is in a state of con- 
stant growth and change. You might almost say 
that it is revolutionized once every ten years. 
The veteran returns to rind the old methods 
useless, the old weapons out of date, the old 
plans of action out of relation to the present 
arrangement of the forces. Nor is this to be 
thought in the least unnatural. Abolish the 
old forms of procedure ; adopt an entirely 
new code, as our Albany pests are per- 
petually proposing ; and Charles O'Conor, 
returning to the profession of which he was 
so long an ornament and glory, and attempt- 



ing his own office business, might break down 
in a police court, under the onset of a Tombs 
shyster. 

No doubt there is progress m the other pro- 
fessions, too ; at least we helpless victims of 
the lawyer and the doctor hope so. But these 
absolute revolutions have, in this century, 
been the distinctive mark of our own. 

The cylinder press made one. Before that 
the circulation of a daily newspaper was im- 
peratively limited by the number of pulls one 
pair of arms could give a Washington press 
withm the hour or two which shut m the life, 
for publication purposes, of any day's news. 
Four hundred was large, a thousand enor- 
mous, beyond fifteen hundred an impossibility. 

The railroads made another revolution. 
They doubled, trebled, quadrupled the area of 
circulation. 

The fast printing press made another. It 
is not too much to say that one man, still 
going about the streets of New-York, modest, 
genial, busy on new notions, gave a new birth 
to the journalism not merely of his own coun- 



try but of the world. When Eichard M. Hoe 
showed how types could be placed on a revolving 
cylinder instead of a flat bed he did as much 
for the profession that now rules the world 
as the inventor of gun-powder did for the one 
that ruled it last. From that moment came 
the possibility of addressing millions, at the 
instant of their readiest attention, from a sin- 
gle desk, within a single hour, on the events 
of the hour. 

And now came another revolution as start- 
ling as any. The conduct of newspapers 
ceased to be the work of journeymen printers, 
of propagandists, needy politicians, starveling 
lawyers, or adventurers. Its new devel- 
opments compelled the use of large capital, and 
thus the modern metropolitan daily journal 
became a great business enterprise, as legiti- 
mate as a railroad or a line of steamships, 
and as rigidly demanding the best business 
management. 

Thus stimulated, its growth again outran its 
facilities. No printing-press ever devised 
could print in the required time as many 



newspapers as there were eager buyers. The 
discovery of a way to stereotype the whole 
paper in half an hour, and thus put as many 
pr e ses as you needed at work on the same 
paper at the same time, solved that difficulty, 
and the business underwent another change, 
amounting to revolution. Then came the 
enormous extension of telegraph lines and 
ocean cables. The old-fashioned letter-writer 
was almost abolished. The Washington cor- 
respondence came by telegraph. The account 
of a great battle fought yesterday east of 
Paris was read in detail this morning in New- 
York. The journalist, at one leap, took the 
whole world for his province every morning. 
With each of these revolutions the sphere of 
the daily newspaper has broadened. It has 
commanded wider and more varied ability. It 
has been able to draft talent from any quar- 
ter, to command the best business sagacity, 
unlimited capital, the widest enterprise. As 
the result of all this we see to-day- 
Daily papers that sell you every morning, 
for three or four pennies, matter equalling the 



contents of a thick book, often procured at a 
cost tenfold, a hundred-fold what the book's 
contents cost;— 

Papers that add to this mass of informa- 
tion as many, sometimes twice or three times 
as many, pages of advertisements, on every 
conceivable subject, classified and indexed; — 

Papers that give you yesterday's news, from 
every quarter of the habitable globe, and on 
every conceivable subject, the downfall of an 
Empire, the conclusions of a European con- 
ference, the result of a horse-race, the verdict 
of a Presbytery, the secret proceedings of a 
hermetically sealed caucus, the robbing of 
Patrick O'Donovan's till, the game of base- 
ball some college boys have played, what Edi- 
son thinks he is going to discover, what the 
Leadville enthusiasts say they have discov- 
ered, and a veto message from the President 
—an infinite variety of things worthy and 
worthless ;— 

And, finally, daily papers that give you all 
this with such multiplicity of detail, and 
in such masses that, unless from morn till 



9 

dewy eve you give your whole time to it, 
you cannot read them through. 

To that complexion have these successive 
and rapid revolutions in journalism brought 
us. What is to be the next great change? 
Will the growth in the size of our papers 
continue, so as to make room tor increasing 
advertisements and yet wider and fuller news? 
Or shall we presently find the greatest news- 
papers too big already and too crowded with 
news to admit any advertisements at all? 
Shall we have cheaper papers? Shall we in- 
crease the quantity or the variety of news we 
print in anything like the ratio of the last 
decade ? 

Certainly there must be great changes in 
the matter of advertising. I doubt if, in 
most cases, the volume is to be much in- 
creased, and in some it is pretty sure to be 
diminished. The business of issuing supple- 
mental sheets to carry off the surplus of ad- 
vertising is self-limited, and in some cases it 
is already carried on at a loss. You issue a 



10 

paper of a certain grade at, let us say, 4 
cents, and you so adjust your scale of expen- 
diture that your receipts. on the circulation of 
so many copies will about balance it, 
leaving the advertisements to furnish 
the profit. But you fill the paper with news, 
and crowd these advertisements into an extra 
sheet. Here now enters another element in 
your problem. Your advertisements can no 
longer be counted as profit, because out of 
them must first be paid the cost for the extra 
paper on which they are printed. Your cir- 
culation is necessarily large, or you could not 
depend on it to pay the expenses of procur- 
ing the news and making the paper. 
But the larger it is, the larger becomes 
the drain for the extra paper on which 
you now piint your advertisements. With a 
circulation of 50,000, the cost of this paper 
might be taken from the gross receipts for 
advertising and still leave you a handsome 
margin for profits. Double the circulation, 
and you have doubled the cost of your extra 
paper for printing the same number of adver- 



11 

tiseinents ; yet you sell the two sheets at the 
same 4 cents for which you once sold the 
one. This may leave the margin on the 
wrong side. 

A few actual figures may make it plainer. 
You undertake to furnish an eight-page news- 
paper for 4 cents. As the circulation in- 
creases, and the business management learns 
to take advantage of it, the advertisements 
flow in and crowd out the news. Your readers 
would resent this, and your rivals would 
have you at a disadvantage. Either you 
must raise the price of the advertising 
so as to get the same revenue from a smaller 
amount of it, and exclude the rest, or you 
must carry it off in an extra sheet for which 
you will receive no extra pay, and the entire 
cost of which must be deducted from the 
profit you rightfully expect on your advertise- 
ments. With the present system of fast print- 
ing-presses, you can make this sheet one- 
(juarter, one -half or the whole size of the 
regular issue, but one of these three it must 
be. Suppose you content yourself with a sup- 



12 

plement one-fourth the size of the regular 
issue. This gives you two pages, and, 
at a low but safe estimate, 1,000 pay- 
ing lines of advertising to the page. 
Now, say you print and give away 
with the regular issue 100,000 of this 
supplemental sheet. Your white paper for it 
costs you $250. Your agate composition for 
it costs you $50 more. You have made an 
outlay of $300 in order to print 2,000 lines 
of advertising. How much must you get for 
that advertising to repay you the actual out- 
lay ? A moment's figuring brings you the 
approximate price of fifteen cents per 
line. Eecollect, this involves no profit. 
It does not even meet the expenses, for I 
have counted the bare cost of the white paper, 
the composition and the proof-reading. There 
are a thousand and one incidentals, the re- 
ceiving of the advertisements, the transmis- 
sion, collections, waste paper, extra post- 
age, extra press-work, extra cost in 
mailing, etc., etc. Does it take much 
study to show that these advertisements 



13 

must bring a good price, or the publication of 
them must be continued for purely philan- 
thropic purposes, and at a loss ? Yet there are 
newspapers which print them for nothing, and 
there are others, of great circulation, too, 
which print many of them at 5 cents a line. 
Years ago the younger Bennett said to me, 
" The growth of this advertising troubles me. 
Whole columns of it I print now at a loss, 
and I would gladly throw part of it out, if it 
were not that some of you fellows would pick 
it up." 

Of course, one point must not be lost sight 
of. There is a certain element of news in 
some of this advertising, and that newspaper 
is more welcome to some of its readers which 
has a moderate amount and variety of it. 
But one question must be settled before 
deciding to publish it at a loss, or to 
publish it for nothing. Is this the most 
interesting news with which this space can be 
filled? Will this cause more readers to buy 
the paper than anything else we could get to 
put in its place ? 



14 

The upshot of it all seems to be that, in the 
long run, cheap advertising must seek 
cheap mediums. The paper of the larg- 
est circulation cannot afford to culti- 
vate it. The advertisers most likely to 
afford appearing in the great newspapers 
of the future will be those appealing to large 
classes, and able, therefore, to pay for the 
widest publicity. The chambermaid that 
wants a place at $15 a month cannot long 
afford to ask 100,000 readers for it. She 
can better go to an employment agency. The 
man who has a horse to sell will not 
talk to 100,000 readers about its points : he 
will go to a sales-stable. The man who wants 
a cook will not advertise for her any more 
than he will for his Winter's supply of coal. 

In London, there is a curious paper, as big 
as The London Times, devoted solely to 
the publication of cheap advertisements 
about individual wants, matters of sale or 
barter. One man has a shot-gun and wants to 
trade it for Blackstone's Commentaries. An- 
other has a guitar and would like to get for 



15 

it a set of shirt studs ; a third wants to trade a 
ring for old clothes. A myriad of petty things 
make their appearance here at an insignifi- 
cant cost, but the paper is published 
solely as an adjunct to a great sales and bar- 
ter bureau. Its circulation is trifling, the 
cost of manufacture little beyond the 
bare cost of composition, and the prof- 
its are derived from the commissions 
on the sales and trades which the bureau culti- 
vates. This is an entirely legitimate busi- 
ness and a convenient one; but it is 
not the business of journalism. No great 
newspaper could afford to bother with it itself ; 
far less could it afford to bother its readers 
with it. They already complain of being 
forced to grope through too many pages to 
find what they want. The experiment of giv- 
ing them still more would only result in driv- 
ing them to the smaller and handier papers. 

If, then, the greatest newspapers of the 
future will not be filled with masses of small 
and comparatively cheap advertising, as to a 



16 

considerable extent they are now, will they go 
to the other extreme? The daring idea has 
sometimes been advanced that the coming 
newspaper would publish no advertisements 
at all. It is not impossible, though just now 
quite improbable. The old theory of selling: 
the paper to the purchaser for the bare 
cost of the white sheet on which it 
is printed, leaving the advertisements 
to pay the expenses of making 
it a newspaper, has been pretty well ex- 
ploded. The colossal expenses of the modern 
daily are no longer risked upon an income so 
uncertain, and at the best so fluctuating. It 
happens, too, by a curious law which is often 
found working in business affairs, that the 
less you need advertisements the more you 
are likely to get them — while the more you 
depend upon them as an absolute necessity 
for the continuance of your publication the 
less likely they are to come. 

It seems chimerical to expect printing paper 
to fall to a still lower price, and at its pres- 
ent price and with their present circulations 



17 

none of the great newspapers could exclude 
advertisements. There is no sufficient reason 
to believe that the insertion of attractive 
news and miscellany in the place the adver- 
tisements now occupy would draw in enough 
more readers to make the profit on the in- 
creased circulation compensate for the loss on 
the advertising. 

But, preposterous as it now seems, I look 
for the day when printing paper will sell far 
below its present price ; and I rest this faith 
on the simple proposition that a manufactured 
article, the process of manufacturing which is 
easy and comparatively cheap, cannot long 
continue to be sold at six cents per pound, 
when the bulk of the raw material entering 
into it grows in the forest, on every hill-side, 
and can be bought at $2 a cord. The dispro- 
portion between the cost of the raw 
material and the cost of the manufactured 
article is too great to be permanently main- 
tained. It is true enough that paper-makers 
have only the narrowest margin of profit 
now ; but better processes for making wood- 

2 



18 

pulp and improved machinery for converting 
it into paper must surely come. So simple a 
manufacture will not continue forever add- 
ing a thousand per cent to the cost of the 
raw material it uses. When the happy day 
of really cheap paper comes, the greatest 
newspapers may fairly consider the problem ot 
excluding everything from their columns bul 
that which is of universal rather than of par- 
tially private and partially public interest. 

Are ive likely soon to have cheaper newspal 
persf You have all been confronted, of late 
years, by an occasional growl like this: 
"Everybody has to take lower prices nowa- 
days. Wages are down, the cost of living is 
down, everything else has come down to 
what it was before the war; why don't you 
put down the price of your paper f But the 
newspapers have not come down to the 
prices before the war, and I make 
bold to say that the sagacious ones will not. 
The Philadelphia Ledger before the war was 
sold at one cent, f venture to predict that if 



19 

it is ever again sold at that price it will be 
many years hence. The New- York quarto 
dallies used to be furnished at two cents. 
Who thinks of seeing papers like those of 
to-day sold at two cents again ? 

A short answer to the inquiring growler 
may be readily given : " We will come down 
to ante- war prices whenever you are ready to 
accept an ante-war newspaper.'" 

What that was few really remember. Look- 
ing over the riles of the journal with which 
I am most familiar I have found that on the 
busiest days, and under the crowning excite- 
ments that preceded the rebellion, it was in 
the habit of receiving an average of be- 
tween one and two columns of news 
by telegraph from all quarters, exclu- 
sive only of the reports of Congres- 
sional proceedings. News from Europe all 
came by steamer. News from all the consid- 
erable cities of our own continent came mainly 
by post, when it came at all. Clippiugs from 
the exchanges were the chief source of sup- 
ply. Even a great National Nominating 



20 

Convention called for only something- 
like two columns of telegraphing, and 
this was so spread out by profuse para- 
graphs and other cheap typographical tricks 
as to occupy double the space we should give 
it now. To-day your foreign news comes ex- 
clusively by the cable ; your domestic news 
too comes exclusively by telegraph. A 
news letter from Chicago or St. Louis 
is almost unheard of, for the simple 
reason that the news has been told by tele- 
graph before the letter could start. For the 
two columns of dispatches from all quarters in 
1859, we now have page after page printed, 
and sometimes as much more remorselessly 
thrown into the waste basket—sent by tele- 
graph and paid for, but not used, merely be- 
cause the columns will not contain it. 

I have mentioned the transmission of news 
by telegraph instead of the mails as one item 
in the increased cost of making the 
metropolitan daily newspaper of to-day. 
A dozen more might be enumerated. 
On no single one does any great news- 



21 

paper dare to undertake material re- 
trenchment. To do so would be to abandon 
the field to its rivals. The public hare been 
educated up to what they now receive, and 
would no more be put off with the newspaper 
of 1860 than they would tolerate again the 
slow mails, or the antiquated railroad accom- 
modations of 3 860. 

But figures are after all more convincing: 
than mere description. I have selected as the 
year affording the fairest data for a compari- 
son with the present times, the year before 
the election which precipitated the Civil War ; 
and. going back again to the records of 
the metropolitan newspaper with which I 
am most familiar, have extracted a few entries 
which tell the whole story. 

In 1859 the total outlay for news, editing, 
type-setting, printing and publishing, includ- 
ing the accounts of the editorial department, 
composing room, press room, publisher's de- 
partment, correspondence and telegraph, was 
$130,198. On the 13th of January, 1879, 
the outlay for the past .year in the same de- 



v 5 



22 

partments was reported at $377,510. Yet 
this is, with many of the accounts, sub- 
divided, so that a part of the outlay is 
charged under other heads; with all the econ- 
omies of the period since the panic, in full 
force ; with expenses at the lowest point in 
nearly every department they have touched 
for several years ; with the cost of telegraph- 
ing from Washington lower than it has ever 
been before, and out of sight of any price 
any telegraph company has ever named— a 
cost in fact of less than two mills per 
word as against the old rate of from one and 
a half cents per word upward ; with compo- 
sition almost one-third lower than under the 
old spoliation system of the Printers' Union, 
and with salaries in every department made 
in some measure to correspond with the ten- 
dencies of the times. 

Let us take another year for a fairer com- 
parison. Against the $11,679 telegraphic ex- 
penses of 1859 set the $51,728 88 in 1874; 
against the composing-room bills in 1859, 
amounting to $42,256, set those for 1874, 



23 

amounting to $125,883 28. And finally, con- 
trast the total expenses of the editorial de- 
partment, including correspondence, in 1859, 
$43,125, with the sum of $188,829 45 spent 
for the same accounts in 1874. 

Trifling as the expenditures of those early 
days seem to us, we come now and then upon 
signs of alarm already inspired in the minds 
of the sagacious metropolitan publishers at 
the evident tendency to make a "better paper 
than the people paid for, to give more every 
morning than the money's worth, and thus to 
keep steadily approaching: the time when the 
amount spent in making the paper would more 
than overbalance all that the subscribers and 
advertisers were willing to give for it. Thus, 
in 1864 I find a curious passage in a publisher's 
report, complaining of the extravagance in 
the outlay for editorial work, correspondence, 
composition, special telegraphing and supple- 
ments. The feeling would seem to have been 
general. At any rate there had been a com- 
parison of figures between different offices, 
and the prudent publisher of The Tribune 



24 

was worried because in the five principal 
items of expense which he enumerated, The 
Tribune had spent in the previous year $28,- 
116 more than The Times. Here are the con- 
trasted items which he reported : 



Editors and correspondence, not war.. 

War correspondence 

Compositors 

Special telegraphing 

Supplements, Tribune 21, Times 11.. 



Tribune. 



$49,228 

25,706 

49,547 

12.623 

9.000 



Times. 

$45,660 
14.040 
45,741 

7,817 
4,730 



The expenses we have been considering 
have been taken from ordinary years. Let us 
now see what they are in extraordinary 
times. When a great war is raging in Euro- 
pean countries with which we have close re- 
lations, through trade, travel and immigra- 
tion, the New- York reader demands as prompt 
and complete^ if not as detailed* news as does 
the London reader, and a great journal can- 
not afford to disappoint its constituency by 
failing to meet this demand. See now what 
it costs, remembering that in 1859 tele- 



25 

graphic expenses were thought enormous 
when they had reached an annual totai of 
$11,679. In the Franco-Prussian war, The 
Tribune's telegraphic bill, largely payable in 
gold, was $85,303 51. Its additional bill for cor- 
respondence, also mostly payable in gold, was 
$43,263 46. Other journals quite possibly 
spent more ; those that did not suffered by it. 

Now take another mode of estimating what 
it costs to try to meet the demand for the 
kind of newspaper to which readers have 
been educated. From a table of comparisons 
covering a series of years I select a few sam- 
ple figures. 

You have seen that m 1859 the entire edi- 
torial expenses, including all correspond- 
ence, amounted to $43,125. In 1866 the 
editorial expenses alone amounted to $81,- 
775, and the correspondence to $49,- 
300 more. In 1867 the editorial alone had 
swollen to $84,778 ; two years later to $96,- 
182; two years later to $107,525; two years 
later to $133,854; two years later still to 
$148,234. Meanwhile the correspondence had 



26 

run up in the same fashion, until in one year 
it reached $70,038. 

Not only was this news procured and 
handled in more costly ways, but there was a 
vast mass more of it. Note how tne cost of 
putting it in type ran up. In 1859 you have 
seen that the entire expenses of the com- 
posing-room were $42,256. Now take a 
few later years. In 1866 they amounted to 
$86,609 ; in 1867 to $91,008 ; in 1868 to 
$94,388 ; in 1869 to $100,769 ; in 1870 to 
$105,492; in 1871 to $107,827; in 1872 to 
$113,518; in 1873 to $117,180; in 1874 to 
$125,883 ; and in 1875 to $154,788. 

Something has been said of the enormous 
increase in editorial expenses, but a few fig- 
ures of individual salaries will make it 
clearer. From an old salary-book containing 
the weekly payments from 1848 to 1859, I 
extract from the first page some items that 
have now a curious sound. The first entry is 
Mr. Sinclair, bookkeeper, $15 ; the next Mr. 
Strebeigh, assistant bookkeeper, $10. Then 
follow Mr. Dana, assistant editor, $14 ; Mr. 



27 

Taylor, ditto, $12 ; Mr. Cleveland, ditto, $10 ; 
Mr. Snow, money reporter, $12 ; Mr. Davies, 
in the courts, $4 ; Mr. Towndrow, police re- 
ports, $7 ; Mr. Augustus Maverick, proof- 
reader, $6 ; Mr. Gibson, ship news and im- 
portations, $14 ; Mr. March, Washington cor- 
respondent, $20 ; Mr. Robinson, ditto, $15. 
Now skip to the last page of this same 
book containing the payments for the 
week ending on the 31st of Decem- 
ber, 1859. Very largely the same men 
made the paper. It had grown, as 
the record on the same page shows, from the 
weekly use of 168% reams for the daily 
to the use of 494 reams. Below these items 
stood the personal list, doubled or trebled 
m length, but with the same leading 
names. Reading down it now, we pick oat 
Mr. Sinclair, bookkeeper, $48 ; Mr. Strebeigh, 
assistant ditto, $30; Mr. Dana, assistant 
editor, $48 ; Mr. Ripley, ditto, $25 ; Mr. Gay, 
ditto, $20; Mr. Towndrow, $14; Mr. 
Snow, money reporter, $30 ; Mr. Gibson, ship 
news and importations, $28; the Washington 



28 

correspondents, $57 50; the Count Gurowski, 
$20. But the latter was not a weekly pay- 
ment, and was unusually high. Many weeks 
the good Count, who was only employed " by 
the piece," got nothing, and the entries oppo- 
site his name were mostly for sums of $5 or 
$10. On the books, a little further back, 
G-eorge William Curtis figures as City Editor 
at $20 per week, and Henry J. Raymond, as 
second on the paper, rose gradually from $8 
to $20. Ei chard Hildreth wrote apparently 
"by the piece,'* and his monthly payments 
ranged from one to two hundred dollars, — 
sometimes more. In 1855, William Henry 
Fry had risen to $25 per week ; and the next 
year James S. Pike was paid " for the whole 
Winter's work at Washington," the 
gross sum of $202 50. Bayard Taylor 
was credited $5 apiece for his California 
letters, but on his return Mr. Greeley moved 
and carried an advance to $10, on 
the ground that "they had made a 
hit." Mr. Greeley's own name appears 
regularly on the lists of those days at 



29 

$50 per week. He afterwards iiacl it 
cut down to $40 ; and there was never a sub- 
sequent advance which he did not resist. 
Once indeed there is an entry to the effect 
that "Mr. Greeley protested at some length 
against the advance in his salary, and gave 
formal notice that he did not intend to earn 
any more than he was now receiving." For 
ten or a dozen years past, it has been my 
duty to fix the salaries on this same book. I 
have found plenty of gentlemen who might 
truthfully enough have given this last notice, 
but not another who made the preliminary 
protest ! 

Does the most rigid economist expect that 
the newspapers will or can return to these 
"prices before the war?" 

Or to pass from the mere question of sala- 
ries, does he wish the pages of markets, for- 
eign and domestic, to be sent once more by 
post, the foreign news to come by steamer, 
the pages of telegraphic dispatches, special 
and Associated Press, to be replaced by clip- 
pings from the exchanges and news-letters 



30 

sent by mail ? Does he wish the actual amount 
of matter given him each morning reduced 
over one-half ; and does he wish the age of 
four-fifths of it increased from twenty-four 
hours to three weeks, before he is permitted 
to see it? 

But, we may be told, all this is unnecessary 
and deceptive. Of course your expenses have 
increased, but so, proportionately have your 
receipts. Well, to that the balance-sheet 
affords an exceedingly argumentative answer. 
On a business of half a million in 1859, as 
a 2-cent paper, The Tribune made a net 
profit of $86,000. At the beginning of 
1879 we found that on a business of 
nearly three-quarters of a million as 
a 4-cent paper, it had made $85,588. The 
fluctuations in the interval had been at least 
sufficient to show that in a matter of such 
magnitude it was not wise to hunt for any 
more risks than we already had. In times of 
great excitement, Presidential years, and the 
like, the volume of business of course runs up. 
I have myself been able to report a net profit 



31 

of $155,000 on a business of $974,000, and 
on the smaller business of $941,000 a profit 
of $171,049 ; and I have also had to report, 
on a business of $925,465, a net loss of $96,- 
690. Or, to rid the statement of figures, we 
have made $85,000 as a 2-ceut paper: have 
spent a half more and made only the same 
sum as a 4-cent paper. In the interval, we 
have sometimes spent twice as much to make 
only twice as much, while at other times, on 
a like expenditure, we lost as much. 

One item of increased expense, and a cruel 
one, has not yet been noted. We must no^ 
pay the postage for our readers. In a single 
year this has amounted to $31,698 71, every 
dollar of which is a dead loss. 

We pay more for special work ou our Weekly 
than we ever did in the old times ; and its 
circulation to-day is larger than I find it stated 
by the publisher (and I uever knew a pub- 
lisher understate those things) in his report at 
the annual meeting the year before I became 
connected with the paper. And yet, with this 
greater cost and greater circulation, we real- 



32 

ize less than two-thirds the receipts of those 
clays for weekly subscriptions, and have to 
pay the postage on them besides. That is a 
sample of what comes from putting the price 
down, for it is on their weekly issues alone 
that the New-York journals have chosen to 
reduce their rates not only to, but below, the 
prices charged before the war. The experi- 
ment, whether satisfactory or not, seems suffi- 
cient. 

But it is time to end this cumulative array 
of facts and figures. I judge that they have 
left us all substantially of one mind. On the 
whole we are not likely to gratify our growler. 
We shall not return to the prices before the 
War, because we dare not return to the nar- 
row scale of expenditure and the meagre fare 
before the War, while to take the old price 
and give the present quality is merely to 
plunge into bankruptcy at a gallop. The 
cheapest thing sold to-day in America in 
proportion to the cost of its manufac- 
ture is the daily newspaper. The aver- 
age American is a shrewd buyer, but he 



33 

does not long insist on buying an article 
for less than the cost of making it, for he 
knows that, in the long run, that means one 
of two things;— that he is dealing either with 
a fool whom he is ruining, or with a knave 
who is cheating him. 

We have seen that the next great revolu- 
tion in journalism is not likely to be a return 
to the cheap prices of the period before the 
war. We have seen that it is not likely to be 
in the direction of increased supplements for 
advertising ; and that it is not likely to be in the 
direction of rejecting all advertising. What is 
it to be ? Shall the variety of news now fur- 
nished by the daily newspapers be still further 
developed, so that, in this respect, the contrast 
between the journal of the next decade and 
that of the present shall be as great as be- 
tween the journal of to-day and that of tweuty 
years ago ? 

Yes and no. The variety can scarcely in- 
crease because newspapers already present as 
many different topics of human interest as the 



34 

average roind cares to concern itself with in 
the day's leisure of the average reader. 
There can scarcely be more topics treated. 
But they will, no doubt, be different 
topics. It is possible to interest large 
masses of people in subjects of more 
importance than many of those which now 
fill the closely printed columns of so many 
pages. The range can hardly be much greater, 
bat it may be higher, and higher without being 
less interesting or less vivacious. 

If we are to have no greater variety, shall 
we not have greater quantity f As growing capi- 
tal and ever-broadening resources permit, shall 
we not have every morning two volumes for 
our four cents where we have now only one ? 
where ten years ago we had the half of one ? 
where twenty years ago we had the half of 
that'? Shall we not give important political 
debates a verbatim report, where we now 
print only four or ^ve columns? Shall we 
not double or treble the space to 
be accorded the details of a great accident ? 



35 

Can a great public meeting be permitted to 
pass without a record of every syllable ut- 
tered in it •? Shall we not have, in a word, 
brief summaries of the news for those who 
are hurried, supplemented by the most vo- 
luminous details for those who have special 
interest and ample leisure; and shall we not 
habitually contemplate the issue of sixteen 
pages to carry all this matter, where more 
than eight now is the exception rather than 
the rule ? 

I know very well that it is in this 
direction the thoughts of many of our 
wisest and most progressive journalists 
have long turned. But nothing seems 
clearer to me than the certainty that the great 
journals of the future will not make their 
chief progress in this direction. I do not be- 
lieve that the daily newspaper of 1890 will 
give many more pages than that of 1880. 
Bookmaking is not journalism. Even maga- 
zine making is not journalism. The business 
of a daily newspaper is to print the news of 
the day, in such compass that the average 



36 

reader may fairly expect to master it during 
the day, without interfering with his regular 
business. When it passes beyond these limits 
it ceases to be a newspaper, and it ceases to 
command the wide support which is essential 
to its success. A feeling of annoyance arises 
in the mind of a reader who has put into his 
hands, in the morning, more matter than he 
can possibly find time to read during the day. 
He does not want to skip any of it, because 
he feels that if he does so he may be missing 
something he ought to get. He cannot possi- 
bly read it, and, at last, in a feeling of irri- 
tation, he abandons the paper, buys a smaller 
one in its stead, skims that, and assumes that 
if it was properly edited he has missed noth- 
ing of real importance. He does not wish great 
masses of undigested news thrust upon him, 
in bulk, that he may take out what he 
wants. He insists that his editor shall do 
this for him ; shall select the salient points 
and present them within reasonable compass. 
It would make no difference, if you offered 
him the undigested mass at the same price 



37 

with the compact summary. He will pay just as 
much for half the matter if put in manage- 
able shape. The great revolution of the fu- 
ture in newspapers is not, therefore, to 
be in doubling their size, in doubling the 
quantity of matter they give, or in doubling 
the multitude of subjects they already treat. 

But, as we have seen, the history of jour- 
nalism, for fifty years, has been a rapid suc- 
cession of revolutions, and no man knows as 
well as the hard-working editor that perfec- 
tion has not yet been evolved. Other changes, 
as marked, are certainly impending. What 
is the next? 

It was a pleasant conceit of Henry Watter- 
son's that, if Shakespeare were living now, 
he would be an editor. The fancy might 
have fallen better upon a contemporary of 
Shakespeare's— that greatest, wisest, mean- 
est of mankind, wbo anticipated the mod- 
ern newspaper, in taking all knowledge 
to be his province. But newspapers are many 
and perpetual. Shakespeares and Bacons come 



38 

ODly once in the centuries. Yet of this we may 
be sure : The field for advantages through 
enterprise in the mere getting of news is 
about exhausted. The great newspapers can 
now all command substantially the same 
facilities. Generally speaking, the news that 
one gets another can get if it wishes. Ee- 
curring, then, to Watterson's conceit, it seems 
safe to say that in the next great stage of jour- 
nalism the enterprise that now exhausts itself on 
costly cable dispatches will go to men who 
can make a great news feature valuable 
rather from the story it tells than from the 
money spent in carrying it to you ; who will 
buy for you a costly thing rather than chal- 
lenge your admiration merely for the money 
spent in the costly transportation of a thing 
of less moment. If it must send a Stanley 
to Africa— and we may well hope that feats 
so brilliant can be repeated—it will send also 
a Macaulay to tell his story for him. 

Why should the busy man read the history 
of yesterday at a greater disadvantage than the 
history of a hundred years ago ? Yet that of 



39 

a hundred years ago has been most carefully 
collated, sifted, winnowed, relieved of surplus- 
age, arranged in proper perspective. You are 
not forced to read the official documents, to 
burrcw among the dry reports, to study with 
minute and painstaking care the disjecta mem- 
bra. You are not loaded with facts that are 
useless, particulars that give no form or color 
to the picture. All this waste is removed. 
Thousands of pages are searched to give you 
one, but on that one is all you need to know. 
A moderately industrious man might spend his 
lifetime reading the authorities on which Motley 
constructed the History of the Dutch Eepublic, 
yet who— speaking of intelligent people in the 
mass, not of individual investigators— who 
cares for the authorities 1 Who wants any- 
thing but Motley? The greatest of recent 
narrative successes has been Green's " Short 
History of the English People." Why shall 
not the most enterprising journal of the next 
decade be that which shall still employ colos- 
sal capital to gather all the news, and then 
crown and fructify its expenditure by hav- 



40 

ing a staff of Greens and Froudes to tell 
it? 

Are a busy people entitled to fewer labor- 
saving and time-saving appliances about the 
affairs that most vitally concern them— the 
affairs of their own day and home — than 
about those of past centuries'? Why should 
not the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, for 
instance, have been as well told for us as the im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings ? A thousand 
want to know the story of yesterday, where 
one cares for that of a hundred years 
ago. Shall this one command the labor, the 
scholarship, the genius of the world, while the 
thousands must toil for themselves among the 
confused heaps, and winnow a bushel for 
every grain they get ? 

I do not mean that the news of to-day must 
be dwarfed into the space it would receive in 
the histories of a hundred years hence. It 
must, of course, be treated with the fulness 
which the present, or, if you will, the fleeting 
interest in it demands. But the eclectic prin- 
ciple is precisely the same. The reader of to- 



41 

day is entitled to have the story of the day 
told for him as skilfully as if it were the story 
of a hundred years ago ; as attractively, in 
proportion to his interest in it as briefly, with 
as little waste and as rigid an exclusion of 
everything that does not add to the vividness 
and fidelity of the picture. 

TJie Saturday Beview called Macaulay the 
father of picturesque reporters. It is in get- 
ting such reporters that the ultimate success 
of the wisest and most munificent news- 
paper enterprise must yet display itself. 
Nor do I mean that it is only reporting 
on a grand scale that is to be thus ennobled— 
reporting a great battle, a revolution, a 
pageant that fixes the eye of the world. The 
genius that enriched the dramatic story of the 
death of Charles the Second, or the Peace of 
Eyswick, never showed itself to greater advan- 
tage than in that famous third chapter, wherein 
by a thousand subtle touches and the use of 
a myriad trifling incidents, like those that 
now lie under every reporter's eye, there was 
reproduced a picture of a past age more 



42 

minute, more comprehensive, more vivid and, 
we may even say, more interesting', than any 
newspaper has given us of our own. 

It will be the highest achievement of the 
most enterprising journalism to make, day by 
day, for the morning reader such a picture of 
his own city, of his own country— such a pic- 
ture for him of the world, indeed, of the day 
before. 9 

The elements of the picture will be ar- 
ranged, too, precisely in the order I 
have named. In the foreground will 
be his own city ; the middle distance will be 
filled by his country ; beyond that, in the 
smaller proportion to which its relative im- 
portance in his eye and for his purposes, en- 
titles it, will be the rest of the world. But, 
if the foreground is to be the city, that will 
require the greatest care, the most elaborate 
work, and certainly not the lowest order of 
ability. The City Department may then cease 
perhaps to be the place where the raw be- 
ginners wreak their will, and become the 
point at which the journalistic graduates will 



43 

be expected to display their best powers and 
most thorough training. 

This then I conceive to be the next 
great revolution in journalism. We shall 
not have cheaper newspapers. They are 
the cheapest thing sold now, considering the 
cost of making them. We shall not have con- 
tinually growing supplement upon supplement 
of advertising. Individual wants will seek 
mediums more suitable. Only general wants 
will need the wider publicity of great jour- 
nals, and these will be kept, by the increas- 
ing cost, within manageable compass. We 
shall not have more news. The world is ran- 
sacked for it now. Earth, sea and air carry 
it to us from every capital, from every people, 
from every continent and from every island. 
We shall not have bigger newspapers ; 
they are bigger now than a busy 
people can read. We shall have better news- 
papers ; the story better told ; better brains 
employed in the telling ; briefer papers; papers 
dealing with the more important of current 
matters in such style and with such fascination 



44 

that they will command the widest interest. 
There will be more care and ability in selecting, 
ont of the myriad of things you might tell, the 
things that the better people want to be told, 
or ought to be told. There will be greater 
skill in putting these things before them in the 
most convenient and attractive shape. Judg- 
ment in selecting the news ; genius in telling 
it— that is the goal for the highest journalistic 
effort of the future. In making a newspaper, 
the heaviest item of expense used to be the 
white paper. Now it is the news. By and by, 
let us hope, it will be the brains. 

"What shall be the relations of this new 
journal of the future toward parties ? I may 
claim to have been one of the apostles of in- 
dependent journalism, but the zeal of the new 
converts has quite left me among the old 
fogies. It never occurred to me that in re- 
fusing to obey blindly every behest of a party 
it was necessary to keep entirely aloof frcm 
party— to shut off one's self from the sole 
agency through which, among a free people, 



45 

lasting political results can be attained. A Gov- 
ernment like ours without parties is impossible. 
Substantial reforms can only be reached 
through the action of parties. The true states- 
man and the really influential editor are 
those who are able to control and guide parties, 
not those who waste their strength in 
merely thrusting aside and breaking up 
the only tools with which their work can be 
done. There is an old question as to whether 
a newspaper controls public opinion or public 
opinion controls the newspaper. This at least 
is true : that editor best succeeds who 
best interprets the prevailing and the better 
tendencies of public opinion, and who, what- 
ever his personal views concerning it, does 
not get himself too far out of relations to it. He 
will understand that a party is not an end, but 
a means ; will use it, if it lead to his end,— 
will use some other if that serve better, but 
will never commit the folly of attempting to 
reach the end without the means. He may 
not blindly follow a party ; in undertaking to 
lead it he may get ahead of it, or even against 



46 

it; but he will never make the mistake of 
undervaluing a party, or attempting to get on 
permanently and produce lasting results with- 
out one. Far less will he .conceive that Ms 
journalistic integrity can only be maintained 
by refusing to believe good of his own party 
save upon demonstrative evidence; while for 
the sake of "fairness," he refuses to believe 
evil of his opponents, save on evidence of the 
same sort. What his precise relation to a 
party is to be, must be determined by his own 
character, the character of the party, and the 
circumstances affecting both; but some rela- 
tion is inevitable, unless he would be impo- 
tent. Of all the puerile follies that have mas- 
queraded before High Heaven in the guise of 
Eeform, the most childish has been the idea 
that the editor could vindicate his independ- 
ence only by sitting on the fence and throw- 
ing stones with impartial vigor alike at friend 
and foe. 

Granting, then, that all great newspapers 
which aim to accomplish any considerable re- 



47 

suits, or exert any considerable influence 
upon the organized public opinion of their 
time, will come to be classed as generally 
acting with or in advance of one or another 
great party, is there not still a wide field upon 
which the whole press, irrespective of party 
affiliations or tendencies, should unite ? With 
some minor disagreements as to methods, may 
we not substantially work all together, on at 
least these three pressing necessities of the 
time :— 

1. A constant, systematic supervision of local 
government, in all things affecting taxes, 
and the increase of local debt. There is no 
need, before this audience or any intelligent 
audience, to enlarge upon the crushing evils 
of the municipal extravagance which for 
the last fifteen years has run riot 
over the whole continent. We have been ac- 
customed to talk with bated breath of the 
enormous size and stifling weight of our Na- 
tional debt. Yet to manage the National debt 
is child's play compared with the task of plac- 
ing on any solvent basis, and within manage- 



48 

able compass, the municipal obligations of the 
country. Said one of the wisest financiers of 
the West, " If I lived in New- York I should 
feel bound to devote a considerable part of 
every day in my own self-defence, in co- 
operation with other capitalists, in an attempt 
to keep the city government within bounds, 
and to keep down taxes." He has since learned 
that he might, to advantage, have been at 
work for years at the same task in 
his own city. It is a policy on which all 
newspapers might fairly unite. It is at least 
one to which the best efforts of every editor 
who wishes well to the city which sustains 
him should, without cant, honestly and clear- 
sightedly, be directed. 

2. Equally hearty should be the union of 
effort toward an examination of all charities. 
The growth of this interest is something enor- 
mous. The abuses connected with it are 
equally startling, and the mischievous effects 
are only second to the evils wrought upon the 
whole community by municipal extravagance. 

3. It does not seem to me quite a truism, 



49 

as some may regard it, nor yet quite Utopian, 
as others surely will, to declare that the press 
ought to join heartily, in right brotherly accord, 
no matter what the party differences, in wag- 
ing war on abuses affecting the public morals. 
Does anybody suppose that, if we did, we 
should see on our statute books laws against 
vice which nobody enforces and nobody ex- 
pects to see enforced ? How long would 
policy shops thrive against such a union 1 
How long would Excise Commissioners defy 
the decency of the community by licens- 
ing peanut stands as "hotels," in order 
that they might sell liquor in defiance of 
law'? 

We might well wish, but with less hope, 
for a similar agreement upon the great prob- 
lem of the treatment of criminal news. None 
of us have to deal with a more perplexing 
question, and as yet the men of good- will in 
the profession have reached no common 
ground about it. Meantime, those who value 
immediate pecuniary success above any other 
consideration, have found the criminal news 



50 

a real gold mine, and explore and exploit it 
accordingly. 

A great newspaper must make money. 
Money-making indeed may not be the sole ob- 
ject ; may, perhaps, not be the chief object, 
since it is a profession, and not a mere trade, 
which editors conduct. But whether for in- 
fluence or durable success, a sound commer- 
cial basis is indispensable to a great daily 
newspaper. Prosperity carries weight ; sol- 
vency gives a sense of security. The paper 
which supports itself respectably can better 
expect to have its opinions regarded by oth- 
ers. It must, therefore, rest for its chief sup- 
port upon the honest sale of wares the public 
want. Whenever it does not, it becomes a 
mere journal of propagandism, and it lacks in- 
fluence precisely in proportion as it lives by 
passing the hat. 

Young editors are likely to grow up in an 
atmosphere of opposition to the counting- 
room. As they become older they cease to 
despise the base of their supplies, and will be 



51 

ready to give some careful consideration to 
certain counting-room points :— 

1. There can be but one head to a newspa- 
per, and that head, in the nature of things, 
must be its Editor. The control cannot with 
safety reside in the counting-room. In 
younger days I was disposed to depre- 
ciate the publisher. Long since I learned 
the folly of that, but I insist, as 
strongly now as ever, that the place for 
final decision must be the Editor's chair. No 
newspaper can have the highest respect whose 
Editor does not peremptorily say when oc- 
casion requires, " I will not insert that adver- 
tisement at any cost. I am not willing to lay 
it before my readers." " I will criticise that 
abuse, no matter what advertisements it 
may drive away from us." And again, 
" I will not put that advertisement in 
that place or in that type no matter 
what they are willing to pay for it. 7 ' 
Wherever there is a conflict between tne 
counting-room and the editorial-room on 
these or a hundred similar and larger points, 



52 

there is always weakness and loss of public 
respect, no matter which side prevails. All 
successful newspaper conduct points to the 
necessity of an absolute autocracy, with the 
autocrat in the Editor's chair. 

2. One golden rule should be kept before 
every occupant of the counting-room, " This is 
a one-price establishment." There is no other 
fair way for advertisers; there is no other 
self-respecting way for a newspaper. If you 
sell a certain part of your space at all, sell it 
under the same conditions to all alike. There 
is no special dispensation for newspapers 
which permits them to commit commercial 
sins and escape the commercial penalty. If 
you do a " Cheap John" business, you must 
take a " Cheap John " standing. If you want 
a business as solid as that of A. 
T. Stewart, you must abide by the com- 
mercial maxims that made his success. 
The moment one advertising agent is able to 
get a ten-line advertisement into your 
columns under any particular classification 
cheaper than another one can, or cheaper than 



53 

any individual customer can (the recognized 
commission excepted), that moment your busi- 
ness has ceased to be an honest commercial 
business, and degenerated into dicker. There 
can be no safer rule for a publisher fchan to 
dismiss any employe who, for any considera- 
tion, takes an advertisement from any 
quarter for less than the honest rate the 
paper professes to charge for it, or who 
charges anybody else a penny more 
than that rate. All this sounds like a truism, 
and yet we shall be nearer the golden age 
when more newspapers adopt a policy at once 
so simple, so straightforward and so re- 
munerative. 

3. Sell your wares for what they are. 
Don't surrender to the vulvar folly that you 
must make advertisers believe that you have 
an incredible circulation, or even that you 
have the largest circulation. The value of 
a circulation is often comparative, anyway ; 
one paper with a list of but 10,000 
may be worth as much as another which 
prints 100,000. The public is finding out the 



54 

humbug about big circulations, and sooner or 
later it goes where it gets its money's worth. 
The Nation announces that it prints only 7,500 
copies, all told, yet it gets 15 cents a line 
for its advertising, has plenty of it, and 
gives the money's worth every time. 
There is but one reason of the least weight 
against publishing a daily statement of circu- 
lation. The public have been so demoralized 
by the grotesque ideas of numbers, not merely 
as to newspapers but in a hundred other mat- 
ters, with which every editor is familiar, 
that ordinary figures have largely lost 
their significance. You all know how 
a meeting which completely packs a hall 
with seats tor 500 is always spoken of as a 
gathering of thousands ; how a man who is 
known to have a few thousand dollars in 
each of two or three ventures pres- 
ently becomes, in the current talk, worth 
a hundred thousand, while from that to being 
a millionaire who swindles the tax collector 
in his returns is the shortest sort of a step. 
Not until the administrator comes to look up 



the assets is the delusion discovered, and 
then the dear public goes through the same 
old amazement over and over again. Just 
such mistakes exist perpetually in the popular 
fancy in regard to the circulations of favorite 
newspapers, until there is scarcely one in the 
country which can frankly state exactly what 
it prints, handsome as the showing might 
be, without disappointing some of its cham- 
pions, who, having lost the meaning of fig- 
ures, would think it certainly entitled to 
double as much. But the policy of prepos- 
terous brag on circulation has ceased to pay. 
The other members of the profession 
know, and the public will learn, that 
there is some sort of proportion between 
means and ends, that the range of circulation 
and the mechanical facilities for producing it 
bear some relation to the real figures, and 
should to the figures given. In my cotton - 
planting days a genial, hearty rebel neighbor, 
General Yorke, undertook to take the conceit 
out of his Yankee friend. "How are you 
getting along cotton-picking?" said he. "0, 



56 

fairly well. 7 ' "How much are you getting 
out?" "About a bale a day," was the practi- 
cal and unsophisticated answer, " 0, 
indeed," said the General, " that is doing 
very well for a Yankee; very well." 
"And how are you getting on?" re- 
turned the Northerner. "0, I am picking 
pretty lively now; I am getting out about 
eight bales a day." Rushing home in hot 
haste, I called up the " driver " of the pick- 
ing-gang, and exclaimed, " Jasper, Greneral 
Yorke says he is getting out eight bales a day. 
Now we are getting out only one, though we 
have more cotton here than he has. You must 
bring your people down to their work, and 
not let the cotton go to waste." Jasper 
scratched his head awhile, and said, " Did 
you say Massa Yorke say he gittin' out 
eight bales a day?" "Yes." "Well, 
Massa Yorke a mighty good man. 
But did he say he gittin' out eight bales a 
day?" "Yes, I tell you, that's just what he 
said." "Well," continued the puzzled negro 
scratching his head more vigorously, " Massa 






57 

Yorke's a berry good man. If he say he git 
eight bales a day, he git 'em; but dis I knowfo' 
sko': he haul 'em all in at one load, on one f'o'- 
mule wagon." The case was disposed of ; and 
the similar brag of the newspaper publisher 
who issues 50,000 copies a day and prints 
them on one four-cylinder press between 
half-past 4 and 6 in the morning, admits of 
as ready and complete elucidation. 

4. Sell your own wares ; don't fool away 
time trying to run down your neighbor's. 
What difference does it make what his circu- 
lation is ? Probably you don't know much 
about it anyway ; but you do know about 
your own. Put a fair price on space in that, 
and give your whole mind to selling it. If 
your space is worth the price you ask, you 
can get all the advertising you want, when- 
ever business is prosperous enough to war- 
rant it, or advertisers are wise enough to know 
how to make business. Arnold & Constable 
sell their goods by offering at a fair price 
what the public want, and forcing the public 
to know it ;— not by standing around criticis- 



58 

ing the offers of A. T. Stewart & Co. and 
Lord & Taylor. An old rule (French, I 
think, in its origin,) used to fix the value of 
the ordinary advertising in a daily newspa- 
per going among the better classes., — the 
classes likely to buy and with taste enough 
to want good things— at 1 cent per line per 
thousand copies of actual circulation. It was 
a fair rule. There are plenty of papers that 
charge more and earn it. But on the whole 
it will be a good thing for the daily papers 
having their largest circulation among the best 
people when they are able to enforce that 
rate. The essential thing is to have some rate, 
fixed with reference to the actual value of 
the circulation, and to adhere honestly to it 
with all alike. 

5. Keep the advertising in the advertising 
columns. I realize that this is not the golden 
age, and that we cannot expect impossi- 
bilities. I do not know of five considera- 
ble newspapers in the United States rigidly 
adhering to-day to this rule ; I doubt if there 
is one that has never, under any temptation, 






59 

departed from it. But we can all see 
that honest dealing with our readers, 
and honest dealing with our advertisers 
alike tend in this direction. It may be said, 
plausibly enough, that there is a wide class 
of subjects in which the public has a certain 
interest, while private parties have a greater 
interest;— that there is, therefore, a certain 
legitimate excuse for publishing matter about 
them as news, and also a certain legitimate 
excuse for taking pay for it as advertising. 
But this opens too many doubtful questions, 
and gives the cash-drawer too great a lever- 
age on the editor's judgment, as to the real 
degree of public interest in the news. The safe 
way, the true way, the way to which we are 
ultimately coming, not soon, perhaps, but 
surely, is to put whatever is to be paid for 
squarely and honestly into columns that are 
recognized as paid for ; to select what is to be 
printed as news solely with reference to the 
largest interest of the widest number; and 
then, if such selection happens to further pri- 
vate interest as well, to take the pay for that 



60 

in the high esteem with which those inter- 
ested will come to regard a newspaper so ju- 
dicious in its selections. 

6. Have we not nearly reached the limit of 
public patience in the matter of type ? May 
we not fairly insist soon on a reform which 
shall make all type readable, none of it so 
small as to be trying to ordinary eyes; and 
none of it so large and grotesque as to be 
offensive to ordinary taste 9 

7. Shall we not soon recognize the fact that 
the fast printing-presses, demanded by the needs 
of the great newspapers, are not adapted to the 
printing engravings u ? Can we not persuade ad- 
vertisers to abandon the effort to make these 
presses do what they were never intended to 
do? If double prices for cuts will not per- 
suade them out of it, if blotches where they 
look for pictures will not, then will it not 
soon be time to try stones instead of grass, 
and to drive the cuts out of your advertis- 
ing orchards at any cost ? 

But these are mere business reforms. There 



61 

are those who insist that the thing really 
needed is what the old Scotch divines used 
to call "root and branch work"— that the 
whole man is sick, the whole heart faint. 
The elder times, they say, were better than 
these; the whole character of the Press is 
steadily deteriorating. 

Well, we have faults enough. And yet the 
elder times were not better than these. 
There was never a time when the Press re- 
sisted greater temptations, or more resolutely 
maintained a level above its surroundings. 
The thing always forgotten by the closet 
critic of the newspapers is that they must be 
measurably what their audiences make 
them— what their constituencies call for 
and sustain. The newspaper cannot uniformly 
resist the popular sentiment any more than 
the stream can flow above its fountain. To 
say that the newspapers are getting worse is 
to say that the people are getting worse. That 
doctrine our superfine moralists have croaked 
ever since we had an existence as 
a people; but whenever the crisis came 



62 

we have always found that, beneath the sur- 
face froth, the currents of National life 
flowed pure and strong as ever. The evil 
tendencies of the Press in our day are to be 
seen plainly enough ; they have been seen in 
all days, since the first newspaper was made. 
It even works more evil now than it ever 
wrought before, because its influence is 
more widespread; but it also works more 
good, and its habitual attitude is one of, 
effort toward the best its audience will tol- 
erate. There is not a newspaper to-day in 
New- York, faulty as they all are, that is not 
better than its audience. There is not 
an Editor in New- York who does not 
know the fortune that awaits the man there 
who is willing to make a daily paper as dis- 
reputable and vile as a hundred and fifty 
thousand readers would be willing to buy. It 
is the newspaper opportunity of the time ; 
— the only great opportunity that has 
come since the concentration of capital and 
mechanical facilities gave the monopoly 
of the present field to the existing journals. 



63 

Several of these itiiglit take it ; the Editor of 
every one of them knows he is making a bet- 
ter paper than his constituency would like, 
and that he might add a half to Ms circulation 
by making it worse ; every one of them 
knows that a less scrupulous rival may 
come to do what he refuses. It is with 
an ill grace that theoretical reformers 
reproach these men for lowering the news- 
paper standard, and making journalism a 
curse instead of a blessing. 

But there are plenty of things we 
ought to reform. First among these I 
reckon the general tendency, even with 
our soberest and maturest journals, to 
the faults of youth. In the nature of 
things, this tendency will be constant, for 
young men do the most of your reporting and 
a good deal of your editing, and always must. 
The rank and file can no more be made up 
of gray-beards in a newspaper than in an 
army in the field. Now youth, and particularly 
youth intrusted with power, is hasty, impetuous, 
given to rash ways. It is sure to be hot tern- 



64 

pered and apt to be acrid. It naturally over- 
states the case. It is always aggressive, and 
is in danger of being uncharitable. In the 
pride of its superior wisdom it is often over- 
critical ; and it often mistakes a sneer 
for an argument. It miscalculates its 
resources. It mistakes the work it 
has in hand ; it sometimes undervalues 
opponents, and again it sometimes trains its 
heaviest artillery on mosquitoes. Just such 
are the faults which a candid observer must 
find more or less developed in a majority of 
our newspapers. The wise Editor will reckon 
upon them as constant forces, with which he 
must always deal, against which he must be 
on perpetual guard. 

Nor will he mistake the public judgment, if 
he assume it to be ill pleased with much of 
this youthful effervescence. Our people like 
well enough to see a hearty, knock-down blow 
given ; but they hate a perpetual nag- 
ging. A daily diet of snarl and sneer 
is not to their taste. They like to 
have their paper positive and frank; 



65 

they like to feel that for a good cause and 
at the right time it can make a hard fight; 
bnt they prefer that its natural attitude should 
be kindly (critical enough it is snre to be 
anyway), and that its prevailing tone shonld 
be one of good humor. They don't want to 
rise from its perusal, every morning, with 
a bad taste in their mouths. The Editor 
who commands their respect and persuades 
their judgment must keep his temper, must 
keep out of petty personal controversies, must 
be seen to have higher motives for attack 
than spite, and higher motives for praise than 
mutual admiration. In a word, the spirit that 
habitually controls the columns must be 
clearly recognizable as one of justice and 
good-will. 

In that spirit we might escape the present 
tendency to run in ruts, both with our praise 
and our blame;— so that, no matter what a 
man does, you can pretty safely predict at 
once what a good many papers are going to 
say about it. If he is a man they are in the 
habit of praising, it takes little less than 



66 

arson or highway robbery, demonstrably 
proved, to force them to hint a fanlt. 
If he is a man they generally blame, he 
is promptly and as a matter of course as- 
sumed to be guilty, however wanton or un- 
likely the charge, unless he can instantly 
prove himself innocent. Nor will any mode- 
rate array of proof suffice. He must make a 
case absolutely impregnable, with the pre- 
sumptions all held rigidly against him. Nay, 
even if his innocence be demonstrated by the 
exclusion of every possibility of guilt, it will 
still be grudgingly remarked that, while this 
explanation seems plausible, it is a very bad 
scrape anyway, for such a man to be getting 
mixed up in! Through this unfortunate ten- 
dency, black-mailers and all manner of per- 
sonal enemies find the press their most ser- 
viceable ally. Let them but start a malignant 
story against a prominent man, and the whole 
hostile Press may be counted on to espouse 
it for them, push it, and carry relentlessly 
forward the work of persecution. Here is the 
open secret of the enormous spread in this 
LofC. 



67 

country of calumny and personal abuse. 
Only get the Press out of these ruts of praise 
and blame, and the half of it is annihilated 
—strangled before it is born. 

Is the power of the Press declining? Every 
little while some discontented clergyman or 
extinct politician declares it is. Quite re- 
cently they have given us very sol- 
emn discourses about it. Newspapers are 
more read, they admit, but less heeded. 
With the air of discoverers they tell 
us of the great things done by the 
journals of the past generation, and triumph- 
antly exclaim, " But who minds now what 
a newspaper says f ' There were giants in 
those days ; only pigmies walk the earth to- 
day. In the earlier times the great news- 
paper stood for a great force ; now it only 
stands for a great noise. It has become self- 
ish, it wants to make money, it is on a com- 
mercial basis now, it actually supports itself— 
how can such a Press wield the old in- 
fluence ? 



68 

I wish to speak with due respect ; but re ally 
this sort of talk — and we hear a good deal of 
it, from unsuccessful quarters— seems to me 
the twaddle of mushy sentimentalists. 
Far wiser and manlier was the tone 
taken by Lord Macaulay, in opening his great 
history : — " Those who compare the age on 
which their lot has fallen with a golden age 
which exists only in their imagination, may 
talk of degeneracy and decay ; but no man 
who is correctly informed as to the past will 
be disposed to take a morose or desponding 
view of the present." 

It is easy to marshal the great names of the 
past, and idle to try to match them from 
among the living. We count no man great, 
anyway, till he is dead. But ^great men do 
not necessarily make the greatest newspapers. 
As well might you challenge The London Times, 
in the zenith of its influence, say in 1855, 
to prove itself the equal of the old Publiclc Ad- 
vertiser, of the century before, and crush it 
with the taunt, " Where have you a man the 
equal of Junius V J As well twit our news- 



69 

papers of the sea-board to-day with their in- 
feriority to the old Pennsylvania Gazette, 
because among" them all is to be 
fouud no BeDJamin Franklin. Most true it is 
that the foremost editorial writer of our time 
has had and is to have no successor. Horace 
Greeley stood alone, without a peer and 
without a rival ;— not perhaps the ideal 
editor, but, fairly judged, the ablest 
master of controversial English and the most 
successful popular educator the journalism of 
the English-speaking world has yet devel- 
oped. I remember how through half his ca- 
reer the men he had angered were always 
saying his power had declined. 

It is not true that the ability of the Press 
is declining. The papers of the country are 
better written now than they ever were be- 
fore. They are better edited. Their average 
courtesy is greater ; their average morality is 
purer ; their average tendency higher. They 
better hit the wants of great, miscel- 
laneous communities, and so they have 
more readers in proportion to population. 



70 

Their power may be more diffused ; but it is 
unmistakably greater. There has been no more 
remarkable phenomenon in tne history of the 
profession than the rapid growth of the country 
press, and its increase in ability, in resources, 
in seif-respect and in influence. There are half 
a dozen towns in the iuterior of New- York which 
now have better newspapers, with larger income 
and more influence, than those of the metropolis 
itself a third or perhaps even a quarter of a 
century ago. 

Let the croakers take any of these towns, 
or any considerable town in the country, and 
compare the character and the influence of its 
press with that of a generation ago, or of the 
period just before the war. Take Rochester, 
or Utica, or Troy. Take the leading papers 
of the New- York State Association, and com- 
pare their circulation, their standing, their 
actual control of State affairs, with what they 
were in 1860. Or take my own old home, 
of which I may speak the more readily, since 
I think I know it well. We are very quick 
at singling out the foibles of its leading 



71 

editors. Even the Cincinnatians themselves 
are ready, now and then, in a spiteful mood, 
to long for the good old days of " Charley ,? 
Hammond, and the other half-forgotten 
worthies of a half -barbarous period. 
Yet I undertake to say that from 
the year when the first-comers established 
themselves in Colonel Israel Ludlow's village 
aronnd the fort and Indian trading post oppo- 
site the month of the Licking, down to this 
year of grace 1879 3 there has never been a 
year when the Press of Cincinnati was so 
ably written or so full of news, was 
so mnch read or so mnch followed as it is to- 
day ;— never a year when it had so mnch to 
do with shaping the policy of Ohio, and of 
the Ohio Valley ;— never a year when its in- 
fluence counted for so much in the Nation ;— 
never a year when so much power was concen- 
trated there in so few hands as rests to-day in 
those of Murat Halstead, Richard Smith and 
John McLean. If you dispute it, name the 
time, the papers, the men! 
No ! The power of the Newspaper is 



72 

not declining. Never before was it so great. 
Never before did it offer such a career. But 
it is power accompanied by the usual con- 
ditions,— greatest when most self-respecting 
and least self-seeking. 

There is more good, young blood tending to 
this than to any of the other professions. 
There is more movement in it than in bar, or 
pulpit, or whatever other so-called learned 
profession you will;— more growth, a larger 
opportunity, a greater Future. We are getting 
the best. 

These young men will leave us far behind. 
They will achieve a usefulness and command 
a power to which we cannot aspire. Very crude 
and narrow will seem our worthiest work to 
the able Editors of a quarter or a half cen- 
tury hence ;— very splendid will be the struc- 
ture they erect. We shall not rear the 
columns or carve the capitals for that stately 
temple. Let us at least aspire, with honest 
purpose and on a wise plan, to lay aright its 
foundations. 



APPENDIX. 



The foregoing address was delivered before the 
New- York Editorial Association at Rochester on the 
17th of June, 1879. Substantially the same ad- 
dress was delivered before the Ohio Editorial Asso- 
ciation two days later at Cincinnati— where it was 
introduced as follows : 

First of all, my best thanks to you for remember- 
ing—for three years in succession— my birthright as 
an Ohio editor. It is something I could never for- 
get, but you might have done so very easily. We 
fancy, those of us who were contemporaries then, 
that we are yet tolerably young, but in our secret 
hearts it does flatter every one of us now to be still 
spoken of sometimes as " the Young Editor." It is 
twenty-one years this Autumn since, with boyish 
pride, I first saw my name printed at the head of 
the editorial columns in my old paper at Xenia, and 
holding up the sheet again and again, puzzled over 
the important question whether or not it would look 
better in some other type. How little any of us re- 
alized that the types we were using then would have 
something to do with the way our names should 
look now ! 

Well, those that are left of us, of the country 
editors of Ohio of that day, have at least served our 
apprenticeship; for good or ill, somehow or another, 
we have attained our majority. 



74 

I remember a smallish, solid, prosperous looking 
exchange of those days, which edited the county 
printing with pious care, as well it might, for, 
though The Bucyrus Journal Editor was then 
known only as plain D. K. Locke, ex-"jour" printer, 
and a red-hot Republican, he was soon to burst 
upon us as the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby. Then, as 
now, The Ashtabula Sentinel was in the hands of a 
Howells, but the young son of the Editor had gone 
down to Columbus, and was trying to see whether 
there was enough practical stuff in him to make a 
leader-writer for The State Journal, at a salary of $12 
a week. Quite fair work he did, but he was dread- 
fully given to very misty German novels, and* to 
reading his long translations at extremely unrea- 
sonable hours to sleepy-headed friends whom he 
might inveigle to his rooms. His name was Wm. 
D. Howells, and he now edits The Atlantic Monthly. 
His chief there had no alarming weakness then in 
the way of German sentimentalism ; but he was 
ready to wander away from his unfinished editorial 
at any hour, day or night, for the chance of finding 
a German band in a concert-saloon, and that ten- 
dency at least has survived the changes, the added 
powers and the wider influence The Press and 
The Gazette and twenty years have wrought upon 
Mr. Sam E. Reed. In those days The State Journal 
was thought to be rather putting on airs, for it not 
only had two editors (Reed and Howells), but it in- 
dulged the luxury of a publisher, who " ran " two 
papers, both daily, and he published them so well 
that presently he became head of the Washington 
branch of the great house that placed the war loans, 
and "Governor" Henry D. Cooke, of the District 
of Columbia. 



75 

There was a lively "local" then on The Cleveland 
Plain Dealer. He had been a "tramping jour," and 
scattered over Ohio from the river to the lakes 
were sundry boarding-houses in towns where 
struggling papers had given up the ghost, whence 
this "jour" had moved on, unpaid himself, and 
with an ever-swelling array of unpaid board bills 
behind him. At last, in printer phrase, he "struck 
it fat," and back he came on his old trail among 
us through Southern Ohio, where every bill that 
Charley Browne had left was paid by Artemus 
Ward. Poor, genial, reckless Browne ! I am glad I 
never saw him after he left Ohio, for the career by 
which he is to be remembered was then over, and 
the rest was painful. 

In those days Eichard Smith had only lately 
ceased to be Associated Press agent, and he still 
clung to the commercial and financial columns of 
The Gazette. He was the shrewdest, as well as the 
most induleent of managers ; but neither I nor any 
of his other wicked partners had then fully awaked 
to this extraordinary true-goodness. On the next 
block The Commercial was making interminable talk 
about its wonderful four-cylinder press. Potter was 
still active, but a young fellow named Halstead, 
who had for some time been "the scissors" of the 
establishment, was coming to the front. He had 
already learned one secret of mailing a good news- 
paper, for he was inventing special trains from 
Columbus or special dispatches from Xenia to en- 
able him to get into The Commercial in time for the 
midnight editions, one day ahead of The Gazette, 
whole columns of clippings from the latest New- 
York papers. "Pap" Taylor had already secured 
lor that grotesque production of those days, The 



76 

Dollar Weekly Times, a circulation of over a hundred 
thousand copies, and Starbuck was wisely adminis- 
tering the trust. Quaint, kindly old fellow ! He 
didn't witch the world with noble editing ; but I 
never think of him without gratitude, for he en- 
gaged me to write him one Columbus letter a column 
long, every day, for $5 a week, when I was more 
than glad to get the job. 

Bickham shone then as the red ribbon reporter of 
all the agricultural fairs. He was yet to serve an 
army apprenticeship before rising to the dignity 
and dollars of our Dayton Warwick. Nichols had 
rivals then in Springfield; he had not yet starved 
them all out. Plumb had just left my own old of- 
fice in Xenia to start on the Kansas road, that has 
led him to the United States Senate. 

But a truce to these reminiscences — a sure sign 
that we are growing old. Let me only say how glad 
and proud I am to find a place kept for me among 
this younger generation of Ohio country editors. 
Young or old, we agree in this : we are all proud we 
are Ohioans, whether we live here or not— proud 
that we were born here, proud of Ohio's soldiers, 
proud of Ohio's statesmen, proud that she has held 
the White House for twelve years, and to believe 
that, with one party or another, she is to hold it 
for at least four more ; proud of her wealth in great 
names and great resources ; proudest of all of the 
high-spirited, generous people, the nameless masses, 
who make tbe noble State, the Gracious Mother of 
us all 



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